User reviews

The 1961 THE MASK is about a psychiatrist who is given an ancient Aztec or Mayan mask by a patient who has just died. The doctor feels compelled to put the mask on, and has horrific visions of the walking dead, sacrificial altars and weird chambers with plenty of fire to boot. Sort of like Orpheus in the underworld. It was shot in 3D, and I can tell you from first-hand knowledge how absolutely terrifying this movie was when I saw it on its initial release. I was 11 at the time. Loud, electronic music made it even harder to sit through. It was Canada's first shot at a horror film and is almost, dare I say, a work of art for the set pieces the doctor experiences each time he wears the mask. The movie, which could just as easily have been a stage play, holds up very well, at least in the 3D segments. The rest is simply filler. Remade many years later with Jim Carrey, but with a decidedly different approach.

Historically important as the first official Canadian made horror film, and in 3-D no less, "The Mask" offers up a pretty damn creepy head trip. It's never as compelling outside of its nightmare / 3-D sequences, but it's nicely atmospheric and definitely very well acted. The visuals by Slavko Vorkapich (who scripted and designed the major set pieces) are most compelling, and could easily freak some people out.

Allan Barnes (handsome Paul Stevens) is a psychiatrist with a crazed patient named Michael Radin (Martin Lavut). Michael had been messing around with a mask which he "borrowed" from a museum, and putting it on has been driving Michael mad...and homicidal. Michael commits suicide, but before doing so, mails the mask to his shrink, and the good doctor finds himself just as fascinated by and obsessed with the thing when HE starts trying it on. Allans' concerned fiancée Pam (lovely Claudette Nevins) and his associate, Professor Quincey (Norman Ettlinger) worry about his sanity and potential for violence.

This is good fun, even if the story is pretty familiar overall. At least, this story does its job of setting up those set pieces, which just aren't the same when viewed in 2-D. That mask itself is pretty cool, whether or not somebody is wearing it. The film is produced & directed by Julian Roffman (who also produced "The Pyx", which is worth seeing), who only made a handful of films during his life and career, and is solidly acted by a cast that also includes Bill Walker as a dedicated detective, and Anne Collings as Allans' secretary.

The movie does put forth that idea that masks like this merely channel a persons' own actual thoughts and personality, much the same way that the same named Jim Carrey fantasy of 1994 did.

Seven out of 10.

This movie really grows on you. Yes, it's true, the non-3D parts are boring, but I find them functional. Like any good freak-out movie, if it was all a freak out, you'd get worn out fast. This is like a freak-out musical in a way, where the freaky scenes are the equal of big musical numbers.

A doctor is turned on to a creepy mask by one of his patients who has turned into a homicidal maniac. Next thing you know, the doctor is trying on the mask and going insane, and oh what a mess, and his girlfriend and everyone, and blah blah blah.

Meanwhile, in the hallucinogenic mask sequences, you get to experience what it must have been like to be on LSD in the 60's. There's a whole "alternate world," where a strange, mutated man is milling around, looking for the woman (?) he is in love with in a fever dream landscape where there are skulls and burning hands and satanists and gore and other neato stuff. And it's all in bizarro 3-D! Even if it doesn't work well all the time, it's still mighty disturbing, especially for a movie from 1961! The images, and the incredible, collage-like soundtrack to the freak sequences will linger on your brain long afterwards, in the same way that wearing those horrible glasses leave an impression on your eyes after you take them off for the "normal" scenes. You're exhausted, and confused, and weirded out.

Yay

Great news! Kino plans to release a restored version of this movie in Blu-Ray 3D on November 24 2015 so the fantasy sequences should really be effective. Those scenes were really the only reason to watch an otherwise banal movie but they were released in anaglyph 3D which was never that effective to begin with. Seeing it in f/s Blu-Ray 3D will be a whole new experience and should be a real trip! Basically the story deals with a psychiatrist who is troubled by the suicide of a patient until he receives a package from the man that was sent just before his death. It contains an ancient Aztec mask but when he puts it on the doctor experiences wild hallucinations. This low budget Canadian production is notable only for those sequences and they should be awesome in this newly restored version.

Restricted somewhat by it's low budget, this Canadian made horror film is interesting, and I would imagine be even better, if seen in it's original 3D form. The effects in the "flat version"look like they could be effective. Film starts off well, but nothing really is explained and film's climax is disappointing, but overall not a bad little "B" movie.

The 3-D process used by the producers of this odd flick was called Nature Vision. Like most 3-D efforts such as "Comin' At Ya" and "The Man Who Wasn't There", the whole point of the exercise was the 3-D. In this, also known as 'Eyes of Hell", the 3-D sequences are pretty effective and trippy and quite bizarre. They also feel like they were shot for another film. The bridging story about a man receiving an Aztec mask is rather slow and ponderous and stylistically inert. But when the hallucinations occur, triggered by the mask, the imagery becomes psychedelic and surreal. There isn't much violence or bloodshed, but the use of the process is respectable. I saw this originally at a drive-in and I well remember the original, colored ad mat (red) that promoted the film's gimmick.

I saw this once as a kid on television. They usually showed like a 3-d movie once a year and it was usually this one with a killer monkey this particular year they put this movie on about a mask and its super freak out nightmare visions. This one was the better of the two as far as the 3-d effects as the monkey one had only a couple of scenes where one would even notice the effects. This one though had lots of them in the nightmare world when the mask was put on. However, the non nightmare sequences were rather boring and seemed to go on forever. Granted, that really made the build up when he was about to put on the mask even better! The story has some sort of doctor, a psychiatrist I think, treating a guy who has gone killer. The guy blames the mask so the doctor tries it on and he is taken to a strange place full of very big elaborate scenes, scenes that really showcase the 3-d effect. In the regular world though there was virtually nothing going on and it was very slow, made you want to scream at the doctor to put on that mask!

... I don't know if that's correct, but I liked it. Paul Stevens stars as a psychiatrist who feels guilt after a patient dies. The now-dead man worked in antiquities and had recently acquired a mysterious mask that he claimed had sinister mystical attributes. The patient had mailed the mask to the doctor, who decides to try it on, only to discover that his patient was right. Also featuring Claudette Nevins, Bill Walker, Anne Collings, Martin Lavut, Leo Leyden, and Norman Ettinger.

When originally released, audience members were given 3D glasses in the shape of small masks, and they were prompted to don them whenever the mask is worn onscreen. They were treated to nightmarish sequences in 3D. These are the best parts of the film, featuring foggy ruins filled with corpse-like people, masked killers, and human sacrifice. The rest of the movie is rather unmemorable, but the nightmares/hallucinations caused by the mask make this a worth-see for horror enthusiasts. The version I watched had the 3D sequences intact, and luckily I had some old cardboard 3D glasses laying around.

No, it's not the Jim Carrey comedy but an utterly obscure and sadly forgotten cheapie from the glorious early 60's. Honestly, I never would have known about this movie's existence if it weren't for a modest film festival held in my country, which included this movie in their nostalgic 3-D tribute series. Apart from the obvious classics, like "House of Wax" and "Creature from the Black Lagoon", they programmed this peculiar little oddity and it unexpectedly became a pleasant little surprise to pretty much everyone in the theater. The plot is non-existent and rudimentary schlock, but the 3-D sequences are nothing short of mesmerizing and vastly astonishing, especially if you bear in mind the time of release as well as the budget Julian Roffman presumably had to work with. The story is actually comparable to the one in the aforementioned Jim Carrey vehicle. Whenever someone puts on the titular mask, he/she undergoes a drastic transformation. But instead of changing into a jolly green-faced comedian, the mask-wearer here directly enters hell, witnesses all sorts of delirious and flashy tableaux and inevitably develops homicidal tendencies. The ambitious and stubborn psychiatrist Allan Barnes receives the mask from a patient who just committed suicide, and instead of returning it to the police or to museum where it got stolen from, he keeps it for research. Barnes constantly convinces his fiancée and himself he's resistant to the mask's powerful satanic side effects, but of course he soon undergoes an incurable transformation. The 3-D footage often doesn't make the slightest bit of sense and/or can't possibly get linked to the rest of the events in the film, but you'll at least have to admit the scenes are trippy and bizarre beyond comparison. There are gigantic skulls emerging from sacrificial altars, large mummified hands launching big balls of fire, ravishing witches luring you with their fingers, trees coming to life before your eyes and literally loads of other lovely stuff. Like any forceful type of drug, the 3-D scenes work addictive and pretty soon you don't even care about the wraparound story anymore as you're simply counting down the minutes until you can put those geeky red & green goggles on again. There's a funny introduction at the start of the film, in which a supposedly acclaimed collector explains to the audience they should put on our "masks" whenever the protagonists puts on his. If that isn't clear enough yet, there's also the brain-penetrating voice-over repeatedly shouting the phrase "Put … the mask … ON!!!". This is, plain and simply, undemanding but extremely relaxing 60's entertainment. It's probably not worth encouraging people to desperately seek for a decent copy (and, of course, matching glasses), but I'm glad I saw it nevertheless.

Wonderful movie. First I have seen from this time period (aside from "The Incredible Shrinking Man") that actually scared me.

A psychiatrist gets addicted to an alternate reality that can be entered by putting on an ancient mask. Trouble is it slowly renders the wearer insane.

I wholeheartedly disagree with the majority of viewers here who say the non-3-d sequences are dull. I found them entertaining and well acted. The whole thing can certainly be read as a metaphor for drug use.

The actual 3-D isn't that great (it isn't like things are thrust out at the viewer). It looks more vaguely 3-D. But the sequences themselves are fascinating and weird and demand repeated viewings.

I think the really striking aspect of this film is the sound design. It truly was ahead of its time. I can't think of another film that makes such mesmerizing, hypnotic use of sound design. I'd be curious to know how they did it.

Sounds are slowed down to a throbbing groan, echoes reverberate in and out and a sonic thumping pounds every time someone gets ready to put on the mask. Just listen to the voice-over when the suicide note is read (doctor's patient).

I love it. Watch it. I watched scenes again and again after my first viewing.

I give this film high marks for the striking, hallucinatory "dream" sequences alone. Visually stunning!

I cant help but think perhaps if i was a bit older, I would have appreciated this movie more..but as it goes, I was only six. My brothers went to the movies earlier that year you see to watch the wonderful and enlightening Born Free..I wanted to see that. But no..by the time I got to go to the movies it wasn't playing in our neighborhood any longer and this was. The Mask..yikes. This is the very first movie i ever saw in the theater and well lets just say it was pretty confusing and scary. I do remember some parts of it being very colorful..:). Anyway, this memory has haunted me for all these years so I was bound and determined to find it and watch it again. Thanks to ebay and the US postal service, I should have this lovely film within a couple of weeks maybe even sooner, so that i can pop open a soda and grab a bowl of popcorn and reminisce..now if I can only find some 3D glasses I will be all set....

This early 60's horror film is one of the slowest moving ones ever. The film begins with an awesome title sequence...some flickering abstract lines, mixed with some deliciously eerie music. Following that (and before the story actually starts), we have one of the most dreadfully boring narrators ever in the history of film, explaining to us what a mask is, and that when the characters in the film put on the mask of the title, we are to do the same with our 3-D specs.

The story itself is a bore, painfully written and with some ludicrous, laughable acting (my favorite was the grumpy landlady). The 3-D sequences are something else entirely from the rest of this film. You'd think they came from a different movie. They are moody, eerie, well thought out and put together. Some of the in-your-face effects still don't work well (even in a theatre) but they are hokey good fun. However, once the non-stereo scenes come back on...they are redundant and increasingly annoying. Still, this is a cult classic by any standards, and you can't help but love it. Understandably, it has quite a following.

There are several firsts associated with this obscure but stylish horror item: it was the first Canadian film to be widely distributed in America; it was the first product in the genre to emanate from the country (so, keeping David Cronenberg in mind, it has a lot to answer for); and, it was the only Canadian production ever to be (partly) shot in 3-D! Given the film's successful combination of art and exploitation, it should come as no real surprise, therefore, to find its director Julian Roffman later engaged as a producer on another notable Canadian horror film, THE PYX (1973) as well as the cheesy exploitation flick THE GLOVE (1979); interestingly enough, my twin brother and I also emerged with divergent opinions on this one but, judging by the final star rating, there can be no doubt as to who eventually won the argument…although, admittedly, his similarly less enthusiastic judgment of THE UNSEEN (1945) had just made me reconsider my own! Actually, this was my second stab at acquiring the film as my first attempt only provided me with a faulty copy. The plot deals with the deadly effect that an ancient burial mask has on whoever happens to don it – from the young disturbed kid being treated by his skeptical shrink at the start of the film (driven first to a homicidal fury and then suicide) and later on, the psychoanalyst himself who receives the mask itself in the mail (a last-minute gift from his former patient)! The film's real raison d'etre and true coup is the surrealistic externalization of the psychoanalyst's demented hallucinations in a reddish-hued Hades (in an otherwise monochrome film) peopled with eyeless arm-grabbing zombies, with the exception of one literally eye-popping specimen, that anticipate the look (complete with monastic attire) of 'the vampires' in THE OMEGA MAN (1971). Ostensibly, these 3-D nightmare sequences (preceded by the ominous off-screen "Put the mask on...now" command – obviously a cue for the audience to put their special glasses on – and underscored by jazzed-up music) were the brainchild of celebrated and multi-talented artist Slavko Vorkapich – best-known for co-directing (with Robert Florey) the avant-garde short THE LIFE OF 9413, A Hollywood EXTRA (1928) and devising the montage segments in Frank Capra's MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939) – but, apparently, his ideas proved too ambitious for the low-budget afforded them and, consequently, they were (mostly) discarded…even if he is still given full credit for them in the film's opening titles.

A psychiatrist doesn't believe an ancient sacrificial mask is causing one of his patients to commit murder but when the guy mails it to him before killing himself, the good doctor gets a chance to find out...

What would have been just another low budget black & white horror film almost rises to the occasion once it switches over to 3D whenever someone dons the mask to experience surreal, nightmarish visions that must have scared the pants off kids at the time, judging by the film's many IMDb reviews. The cheesily avant-garde visions are ambitious, I'll give them that, but the rest of the film is a little too slow-moving for its own good and the low body count doesn't help, either. That said, I'm a sucker for ancient artifacts that still possess the power to wreak havoc in the present day and the mask in question, found during a South American archaeological dig, was once used for human sacrifice just like the horrific Aztec ceremonial cloak in the classic Cornell Woolrich horror yarn, "I'm Dangerous Tonight". Tobe Hooper turned that tale into an OK TV movie and I also liked "The Cheaters", an episode of Boris Karloff's THRILLER, where a pair of antique bifocals cause wearers to see things as they really are.

Shortly before committing suicide, archaeologist Michael Radin (Martin Lavut) mails a strange South American mask, an exhibit from the Museum of Ancient History where he works, to his psychiatrist Allan Barnes (Paul Stevens). Barnes is compelled to put on the mask, and discovers that wearing it has terrible consequences.

The plot for this strange, early'-60s 3D movie shares similarities with the better known '90s Jim Carrey vehicle of the same name, both films concerning an ancient mask that drastically transforms the personality of the wearer.

In the Carrey film, whoever possesses the mask becomes a mischievous character with cartoonish superhuman abilities, but in the '60s movie, the result is more sinister, the mask accessing the darkest recesses of the mind, magnifying the evil in the wearer, driving them to kill. Donning the mask also allows director Julian Roffman to get really trippy with his film, the wearer experiencing strange hallucinations that feature floating skulls, avant-garde dance, disembodied hands, fireballs, a zombie ferryman with a coffin-shaped boat, and a rubber snake, all of which is shot in glorious 3D.

The 3D sequences were clearly the selling point of the film: in some theatres, masks were handed out to viewers, the movie prompting them to 'put on the mask' whenever Barnes puts on the titular artefact. The 3D content is fun at first (even when viewed in 2D), but soon becomes repetitive and tedious; however, it is nowhere near as dull as the stuff in between, which comprises of lots of mundane 'filler', as Barnes' pretty fiancée Pam tries to convince the doctor to give up the mask, Lieutenant Dan Martin investigates Radin's suicide, and Barnes makes a move on his sexy secretary Miss Goodrich (Anne Collings), who he only notices is attractive when she takes off her glasses and lets her hair down!

In the end, Barnes forces Pam to wear the mask so that she can experience its power, but being so pure and innocent, it has no effect on her. There is also some suggestion that the film is an allegory for drug addiction, with the wearer of the mask becoming hooked on its hallucinatory effects, the ultimate price being death.

4/10.

One of the better 3-D ones with a decent story and some great effects. Fortunately with this you do not have to wear the glasses all the time and only when you get the instructions, 'Put the mask on, now!' It's rather good that during the 2-D it is interesting and all the time there are often things in the foreground and with some people very close that almost look 3-D. When we have to get the glasses on these sections are amazing. A good idea that they only have to be dreamlike almost surreal, walking through the forest with branches near by and lots of arms towards us or even just some hands or even just the fingers. I think its well done and certainly the Kino Classics are splendid with many extras.

In the normal scheme of things I would have given this bit of schlock-horror one star--and that would have been on a good day. But THE MASK has two things going it for it: it is 3D available to the homemarket and it generally has a cheap purchase price. What more can you ask? A psychiatrist (Allan Barnes) has a homicidal archaeologist patient who swears up and down that he was just fine until he put on an ancient Indian mask the local museum dug up--and now, under the mask's influence, he has fearful fantasies, nasty nightmares, and (dare I say it?) the urge to kill. Our intrepid analyst doesn't believe a word of it, so the archaeologist goes home and kills himself... but not before mailing the mask off to the doctor who failed him. Does the doctor put on the mask? Since we've only gotten about fifteen minutes into the movie he darn well better.

Each time the doctor puts on the mask he has the same fearsome fantasies and nasty nightmares as his deceased patient--only now we see them, and THEY ARE IN 3D! Now, in its homemarket edition, THE MASK comes with all sorts of warnings that everything from visual impairments to bad color settings on your screen will affect the effect, so you're pretty much on your own here. For myself, I found it worked pretty well as long as you were watching the movie in a pitch black room. But the fact that the movie is sometimes in 2D and sometimes in 3D has a peculiar result: its fun to put the glasses on and off, but it takes a few minutes for you to begin to read the film as 3D, and then when you taken the glasses off to see the 2D part you feel slightly askew because you're still sorta seeing red out of one eye and blue out of the other.

Several people have commented that they found parts of the film pretty creepy and the 3D sequences really imaginative. I myself thought the whole thing was about as frightening as a box of dry cereal and the 3D bits--they were fun enough, but let's face it, this ain't no CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. Still, the ten-to-fourteen year old crowd will get a kick out of it, and it's all just silly enough for grown ups to find mildly amusing too. So PUT THE MASK ON NOW and have some foolish fun!

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

I was 8 years old when I saw this movie. My friend and I went ALONE!!!! They actually let us into a matinée! ALONE! We got sooooo scared, we hid behind the seats. Popping-up to see when it was OK to watch. Skulls coming at you. Flames shooting at you...right out of the screen! Arms reaching out for you! All in 3D!! Glad it was not in COLOR!!!

It was more than our little minds could stand, we wanted to run and leave sooo bad, but we had paid our money, and we talked about it all the way home, and then the next day it was as if we had not seen it!!!! I forgot it for about 20 years (1980'ish), when it was shone, in 3d I might add, on TV for Halloween!!!! I guess that is what you call traumatized! WE WERE! They should never have let 8 year old's in to see this movie, ALONE!!!! Now I have the Elvira VHS tape of it.

We thought it was coooooool, and we did enjoy it, but we were SCARED TO DEATH!!!!

SO, on a spooky night, watch it.....but watch out!

There are countless small budge horror made in Canada, this is one of them from the sixties, about a young archeologist that stolen an ancient mask from Tikal at South America of the Museum and went mad putting it at your face, it taken him into another dream dimension where has a disturbing and even a surrealistic experience, hereinafter he stayed distraught, before committed sui.cide, he sent it to your psychiatric that start used such menacing bleak object.

The story aside be auspicious the miscasting of some actors as the so young archeologist somehow undermine the offering a little bit, also the gorgeous girls on movie have a puritan behavior lowering it, in others words, a little mistake here and there mitigate the flick just in on tune which is summed up on the fine dreaming disturbance only.

Thanks for reading.

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First watch: 2024 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 6.5.